Book Donations Must Build Rural Reading Habits

On Jan. 9, 2026, the Philippine Literacy Project delivered boxes of books to Olango Integrated School in Barangay Olango, Miagao, with UP Visayas, the UPV University Library extension team, UPV Ugnayan ng Pahinungod, and the 61st Infantry Battalion hauling learning materials through rugged roads that most of us only see on postcards or social media posts.

This is a laudable effort to bring timeless and tangible learning materials.

The photo-worthy part is easy: the turnover, the speeches, the smiles, the kids in costume, the stuffed toys, the snacks, the signatures on acknowledgment papers.

The hard part starts the next morning, when the school is quiet again and the mountains go back to being mountains.

The story’s bluntest line is also its most honest policy statement: in Olango, “cellular signal and a functional library are both scarce.”

In places like that, books do not only bring nostalgia but are actually the most reliable technology the uplands have.

We can talk all day about tablets and platforms, but the Philippine Statistics Authority and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (PSA-DICT) National ICT Household Survey shows only 48.8% of Philippine households had internet access at home in 2024, even after a big jump from 17.7% in 2019.

Even among households that do connect, the average monthly internet spending was PHP 1,069.10 in 2024, which is real money in communities where families are already choosing between fares, food, and school supplies.

Western Visayas is not spared from the unevenness, with one report citing only 40.60% of households in the region having an internet connection, and most users relying on cellphones.

This is why “digital divide” is too polite a term, because a divide implies two sides within shouting distance, and what upland barangays face is closer to a chasm.

Meanwhile, the learning gap is not a vibe or a slogan, and the World Bank’s Learning Poverty brief puts a brutal number on it: 91% of Filipino children at late primary age are not proficient in reading, adjusted for out-of-school children.

The Department of Education’s (DepEd) own policy brief, reflecting the revised literacy bar, shows why comprehension matters: basic literacy among Filipinos aged 10 to 64 is 93.1%, but functional literacy is 70.8%, a gap of about 22 percentage points that is basically the difference between decoding words and understanding them.

Recent findings of the Programme for International Student Assessment under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tells a similar story at age 15, where only about 24% of Filipino students reached at least Level 2 in reading, meaning the majority are still below the baseline for navigating everyday texts.

So yes, celebrate the donors and partners who showed up, and listen when Jhoanna Gorriceta-Rojo tells kids, “Never let distance limit your dreams,” because that message is fuel.

But dreams still need routines, and a box of books can become shelf décor without a reading ecosystem.

We already know what works when adults commit to the unglamorous parts: DepEd’s summer Literacy Remediation Program reported strong gains for struggling Grade 3 readers after an 18-day intervention with small groups and consistent daily schedules, and the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) Karol Mark Yee put it plainly: “Every child can read, as long as we give them support to do so.”

That same logic should guide Olango now, because the real win is what happens on ordinary Tuesdays.

The doable plan is not complicated: set a daily or thrice-weekly reading block, assign teachers or trained volunteers for guided reading, establish simple lending rules that kids can follow, and keep a basic log of reading frequency and comprehension checks for the next two school quarters.

Parents should be brought in without pressure or expense, through short take-home reading time, read-aloud nights, or “bring a story” sessions that welcome Kinaray-a, Hiligaynon, and English, because comprehension grows faster when language feels like home.

The local government unit (LGU) and DepEd can make this stick with a small annual library maintenance and replenishment budget, plus targeted reading remediation support that is measured, not just announced.

UPV, the donors, and partners can level up by returning for teacher mentoring, monitoring visits, and transparent criteria for which Miagao schools come next, so this becomes a pipeline and not a one-time convoy.

In the next 90 days, the goal should be simple and public: protect scheduled reading time, get the lending system running, train two or three local reading mentors, and publish a short progress update—because the books deserve a life beyond the photo.